


you’re breathing in my open mouth

by blueallthetime



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, token magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 12:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20600435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueallthetime/pseuds/blueallthetime
Summary: The night before he leaves, his last night in Derry maybe ever, Richie climbs in Eddie’s window.





	you’re breathing in my open mouth

The night before he leaves, his last night in Derry maybe ever, Richie climbs in Eddie’s window.

Eddie’s stuff is mostly packed up so they sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. They’re talking a little but they’re not saying a lot; there are only so many things Richie has left to say at this point before he starts telling Eddie the stuff he actually feels. It had been the same way with the others earlier in the day, everyone full of too much to really talk about any of it.

So: 

“There’s no way you’re fitting all this in your car, man,” Richie says, looking at the roughly seven thousand boxes, all of them labelled in Eddie’s neat Sharpie writing. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were some sort of logistical expert,” Eddie says huffily. “I didn’t know you had so much experience with packing and transporting. Excuse me for not just throwing my shit in two duffel bags and calling it a day.”

Richie had, in fact, just thrown his shit in two duffel bags and called it a day, believing Speed and Intention to be of the essence in the whole enterprise of Getting The Fuck Out Of Derry, so he just says, “Haha, fuck you,” and leans his shoulder into Eddie hard enough to make him squirm.

His eye falls on the box that says SWEATERS (WINTER), stacked on top of SWEATERS (FALL), and he feels a sort of bright twanging pain at the thought of Eddie bundled up for New York winters, three thousand miles away from Richie. Probably he’ll get snow in his eyelashes while Richie is off getting all sorts of Californian sunburns without him. Probably it’ll be stupid fucking cute.

Eddie interrupts this rapidly derailing train of thought by shaking up his inhaler, and half-thinking, reaching out --

Richie stops him with his thumb on the trigger, just a whisper escaping, dissolving in the air between their faces.

“What the fuck, man?” Eddie says, trying to pull away, but Richie twists the inhaler out of his hand, brings it up to his own mouth and takes a quick, experimental puff.

He has a flash of something at the bitter taste of it: the seven of them in a circle, passing an inhaler, faces solemn and very young -- but he can’t think when, or why Eddie would ever have permitted such a thing.

Eddie evidently has no intention of permitting such a thing now, making a furious lunge for the inhaler as Richie whips it away, holding it at arm’s length, out of Eddie’s reach, and then hiding it behind his back, cackling wildly as Eddie knocks him over trying to get at it.

Eddie is on top of him now, between his legs, cursing his name, Richie’s nerves lighting up wherever they touch, the inhaler digging into the small of his back. Eddie is trying to shove his hands in the pockets of Richie’s jeans, and Richie feels a shock run through him, white-hot, as Eddie’s fingers graze the skin of his thighs through the ragged denim.

Richie’s leg kicks out like he’s been electrocuted, dislodging one of the stacks of boxes and sending them thudding to the floor. They both freeze, panting, and at the ominous creak of a chair below Richie scrambles to the door, opens it just enough to call down, “Sorry, Mrs K! We’re all good up here, just, um, wrestling!”

“Wrestling, are you out of your fucking mind,” hisses Eddie, still sprawled on the floor, colour high in his cheeks, and Richie stares at him dumbly for a second before hastily correcting, “Packing!”

“She’s gonna come up here,” Eddie warns, as Richie clicks the door closed and trips back towards him.

“Well, we have to repack all this shit you just knocked over, so where’s the lie, asshole?”

“First of all, you fucking knocked it over,” Eddie says, and together they gather up SOCKS, UNDERWEAR and get them back in the box, Richie waggling his eyebrows at the carefully folded shorts until Eddie bounces a balled-up pair of socks off his head.

When they’re done Richie flops backwards onto the bed. He doesn’t say anything; there are things he has not been saying to Eddie for years.

Eddie lies down beside him, leaving a space of maybe two inches between their arms. Richie bites back the screaming urge to just roll right over on top of him.

He becomes aware of Eddie fidgeting with something. He reaches out without looking, flails about until he can take hold of Eddie’s wrist, brings it up in front of his glasses so he can see what he’s holding.

It’s a token from the Capitol. Richie hadn’t even noticed him swipe it; he must have got hold of it while Richie was having a full-body meltdown about, like, the brush of Eddie’s fingers against his leg.

“Did you pick my fucking pocket?” He honks out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re like a tiny Victorian urchin, man, I’m impressed. I’m gonna start calling you Dodger, _awright guv’nor_ \--”

“It’s compensation! For you stealing my actual life-giving medicine, you asshole, oh my god, will you stop with the goddamn Voices --”

“Life-giving, that’s such bullshit, you don’t even need it --”

“Well, you don’t need _this_, because you’re fucking leaving town, so I’m keeping it.”

Richie’s leaving town, that’s true; Eddie’s leaving town. Richie doesn’t hate the idea of Eddie keeping something of his, even something this small and stupid.

“Fine, so keep it,” he says, and shrugs. “Who knows, you might get lucky.”

“Might get --” Eddie repeats incredulously, and lets out this completely stupid, thrilling, high-pitched noise, shoving himself up on an elbow to stare down at Richie. He hovers for a second, his gaze tracking from Richie’s eyes, to his mouth, back up, and when Richie says, “What?” Eddie makes that noise again, and ducks to kiss him.

It’s softer than Richie would have guessed, has imagined. He starts to open his mouth just as Eddie draws away, and there’s an awkward half-second before Eddie changes his mind and comes back, and Richie goes wild with relief at the first slide of his tongue.

Eddie sighs into the kiss, and Richie pulls back then, just to get a look at him. He reaches out and strokes the side of Eddie’s face, can’t stop himself.

“Breathe,” he says. Eddie breathes, eyes dark and huge on Richie’s face, mouth wet. Oh, Jesus.

“Kiss me again,” Richie says, something constricting in his own chest so that he thinks, wildly, of the inhaler.

Eddie nods, and does it, and Richie couldn’t tell you which of them makes the hurt, wanting noise.

Eddie kisses him, and pulls away to remove Richie’s glasses, and seems to find his voice in the moment it takes him to set them carefully on the nightstand.

“No but seriously,” he says, rolling back towards Richie, talking low and fast and hoarse. “What am I supposed to do with this token, like do you even know how many people have touched this, how unsanitary,” kisses Richie again, slightly off-centre, still talking somehow, and Richie gets fingertips to his jaw, tips his face up higher, kisses him, kisses him, again and again, until Eddie gasps and breaks off, pressing their foreheads together.

“Richie, I, do you even know,” he says, sounding completely fucking desperate, as if _he’s_ the one, as if he feels broken open like Richie feels.

“Eds,” he says, “Eds, Eddie, I know. I fucking know,” even as Eddie is reeling him back in by the collar with shaking hands, and they’re fucking _leaving_ in the morning, he wants to cry it’s so unfair.

They kiss until they exhaust themselves.

When they finally come to rest, legs tangled and Richie’s hand twisted lightly in the back of Eddie’s hair, Eddie inspects the token again.

“Don’t say I never got you nothing nice,” Richie says.

Eddie taps the token lightly against Richie’s chest. “It literally says No Cash Value on here.”

Richie thinks his heart might genuinely burst. He shifts a little, pressing closer and Eddie moves with him, settling. _Eddie, Eddie_. Eddie curled against him, Eddie who is worth every token Richie ever had, every K.O., ten thousand slot machines ringing jackpot all at once.

“Yeah, well.” He clears his throat. “I always knew you were a cheap date, baby.”

Richie can’t see much without his glasses, but he feels the curve of Eddie’s smile against his cheek.

“Asshole, asshole,” Eddie mutters, and Richie gathers him closer still, deliriously tired and happy.

In the morning, Richie wakes first, to the soft beeping of Eddie’s watch. He’s looked at Eddie’s face across a pillow more times than he can count, but in this muted tender light, without a secret burning at the core of him, he looks his fill.

The token has left an imprint on Eddie’s cheek where he slept on it, and Richie feels, god, wild with love for him; it’s the old, carving kind of love, shot through now with the knowledge of the noise Eddie makes when Richie fits a hand around the shallow curve of his waist, the heat of his mouth against Richie’s throat, his hungry, open kisses: sunset colours in the clouds.

His parents, two duffel bags, the airport, three thousand miles.

He kisses Eddie’s ear, his eyebrow, his soft half-open mouth, climbing over him as Eddie starts to stir. “I gotta go, Eds, I gotta --” and Eddie, half asleep, fumbles for his hand and presses a grumbling kiss to the old scar on Richie’s palm before releasing him.

Richie swipes his glasses from the nightstand, shoves the heels of his hands hard against his eyes so he doesn’t cry. He picks his shirt up off the floor, almost trips over the box of TAPES which Richie knows, he knows without looking is full of the mixes he’s made for Eddie, years and years of them.

Halfway out the window, Richie sees the inhaler, lying forgotten on the floor. He stares at it for a moment, then hoists himself back in, snatches it up, holds it tight in his fist all the way home.

\--

From the bathroom, a noise of outrage.

“How long have you had this?” The cabinet rattles. “Oh my god, did you _steal_ my inhaler, what’s wrong with you?”

Eddie sticks his head out into the bedroom, toothbrush jammed in his mouth and dark med school circles under his eyes.

Richie stretches luxuriantly on their scratchy polyester sheets, preening under his glare. “I’m just wild for stuff you’ve had your mouth on, baby, you know that.”

“Well, it’s expired now,” Eddie says, heading back in to spit, “So thanks for fuckin’ nothing.”

“I’m expired,” says Richie nonsensically, “I’m expiring, come save me.”

Eddie obliges, sitting across his hips, pinning Richie’s hands over his head as Richie grins up at him.

Later, in the dark, Eddie says softly, “Is it the same one, my old -- Is that the one from when you kissed me, the night before we left.”

Richie thinks about it; he has to concentrate, finding it weirdly hard to make a clear picture at first. Eddie’s room, seven thousand boxes. The dusty medicinal taste in Richie’s mouth, then his whole body lighting up. 

“You kissed me first, fucknuts,” he says, delighted, remembering.

“I did, didn’t I,” Eddie says, and Richie hears in his voice something of his own fucking wonder.

\--

When people in California ask how they met, Richie says, “We grew up together.”

He doesn’t tell them about sobbing himself to dehydration on the flight out here, about calling long-distance from the dorm two, three times a week for months, _religiously_, until they got Eddie’s transfer fixed up, about Richie hoisting both of Eddie’s duffel bags and striding from airport arrivals out into the bright day. He doesn’t tell them how it felt like a heist, like springing Eddie from a trap, like saving the both of them from a dreadful fate in some sort of deeply, cosmically romantic way.

“We grew up together,” he says, and, “Eddie was the girl next door,” and, “Did you ever see Romeo and Juliet?” until Eddie inevitably says “Jesus Christ, Rich, stop talking,” and slaps a hand over his mouth, apologising for him to the company as Richie grins against his palm.

It nudges at him sometimes, though, a faint bumping at his temple that Richie can usually brush away under the guise of adjusting his glasses.

That one particularly upright-looking penguin at the San Francisco Zoo who reminds him of Stanley (and he blinks, _who’s Stanley?_); the too-quick spin he makes at some kid whooshing past on an old bike, cards rattling in the spokes; the way he and Eddie both wake up screaming from nightmares they can’t remember even as they lie there in the sweating aftermath, sometimes, still.

When he thinks about it at all, the edges of his memories lost like exposed film, Richie thinks, maybe that’s just how it is, when someone flares so brightly for you. Maybe everyone else in the world is walking around full of cotton-wool gaps and Kodak carousels of the way their best friend used to hold an ice cream cone when they were twelve, a necessary condition of loving so fiercely.

They get a good twenty years this way, give or take, in a series of progressively less shitty apartments and houses, porches and gardens and a hammock strung between trees, eventually; neither of them thinking anything of the inhaler in Richie’s bathroom cabinet, or the arcade token which migrates, over the years, from the front pocket of Eddie’s backpack, to his wallet, to the nightstand on his side of the bed.

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw It Chapter Two (2019) and I couldn't stop thinking about Ben keeping the yearbook page in his wallet and remembering, a bit.
> 
> Working title for this was TOKEN MAGIC > CLOWN CURSE so that's, you know, the vibe.
> 
> Title from "Waiting Room" by Phoebe Bridgers.


End file.
